One Night the Moon (Rachel Perkins, 2001) wr. Rachel Perkins; tragic music-drama adapted from true story about a blacktracker called in to find a missing girl, starring Perth's own Kelton Pell; Paul Kelly, Kaarin Fairfax and their daughter Memphis Kelly are cast as the screen family; music by Mairead Hannan, Paul Kelly, Kev Carmody (premiere, Sydney Opera House June 2001- released shortly afterwards); 57 min. - a TV hour, presumably so that the ABC could air it
I confess I dislike Paul Kelly, and this is a Paul Kelly Family Film, so the less I say about it the better. I will say that Kelton Pell acts (and sings) everyone else off the screen.
Superbly photographed and edited, this is genuine cinema of the highest order and Australia can be immensely proud of it. Andrew L. Urban, Urban Cinefile.
The daughter in One Night the Moon serves as a metonym for contemporary white Australian's discomfort with place and a strange, perhaps uncanny relationship with Aboriginal Australians. She serves as a warning to other 'settler' Australians about what is likely to happen if we continue to repress our disturbing past in relation to Aborigines. However, she also serves to signal how white Australians might come to find some redemption and comfort with Indigenous Australians. Dave Palmer & Garry Gillard, 'Aborigines, ambivalence and Australian film', Metro, 134, 2002: 128-134.
Garry Gillard | New: 10 November, 2012 | Now: 26 June, 2020